home to the lil' quirky side of my brain that is philosophical, imaginative and mildly sadistic

04 December 2010

Oatmeal Cookies

I have been wanting to make these long long long ago. Today was supposed to be used for assignments and revisions for the coming midterm papers before I go off and play during midterm break, but as usual, things happen, hence study plans fail.

What happened was that I went to Suiee’s house and she let me try some awesome cookies her sister got her. They chewy and yummy and fruity. I fell in love, and told myself I simply had to make those cookies I had been putting on hold for so long. They changed my perception towards chewy cookies. I’ve always been the crunchy-cookie kind of person, but now I know, chewy is good too!

It started with Google.

I went with Oatmeal Cookies in the end because it called for Walnuts and that was exactly what I had.

These are the sacrifices and they are all about to die and turn into lovely cookies. That red scale has travelled from Suiee’s house since last semester and has never left my house - I doubt it will be leaving anytime soon. *grins* And yes, the can of raisins priced at RM7.95 came all the way from Choice Daily, Kuching.

Then, butter met sugar. I have a theory, that a cookie maker can have muscles trying to cream the two, provided they do not eat the cookies afterwards. Owh, I guess that’s why mixers were invented. Sadly, I do not own one, so muscles and a fork will have to do.

Egg and vanilla joined the family. They intended to breed and create a whole new population of Oatmeal Cookies.

Suiee and Zihan came for corn soup in the midst of my baking session, and I forgot to take pictures of which ingredient met which ingredient after that. Distraction, tsk tsk tsk... Btw, Suiee took this – my dinner, her supper.

Flour and walnuts and raisins and oats came into the picture and created cookie dough!

And then these came out of the oven!

The verdict: I thought that it was a little on the sweet side. The oats were too coarse for my liking, but should I have used quick-cooking oats, the texture would be too fine. Chewiness was okay I think, and the walnuts added some oomph to it.

Suiee and Zihan thought the same. The taste of oats was rather overwhelming. But they later said that these were as good as the ones from Subway. I’ve never tried those, but omgee damn proud lor, but maybe they were scared to see me cry. Owh well, there’s always room for improvement.

One thing I’ve learnt from baking is that whenever you see an angmoh recipe, first thing you do is cut the amount of sugar in half =P I did that and it still came out pretty sweet. See, I am capable of learning despite it being a matter of how soon, considering the countless sweet-until-almost-inedible things I made.

Baking is therapeutic to me. When I am hyper it calms me down, when I am bored and emoing it fills up my time, and when I am sad, it takes my thoughts off problems for a while as I measure, mix, and watch my work grow in the oven. The part where the creation comes out inedible however requires a whole different kind of therapy =P But if whatever I’ve made comes out satisfactory, that is when everything that was wrong seems right again. Sadly, this does not happen too much in Kuching because the master of all cooking, mom, lives there too. Whatever I make is almost always a failure to her. BUT, it is a different situation here in uni because my food-deprived Cyberjaya counterparts do know how to appreciate my creations =D Good food is scarce after all!

Btw, I sacrificed a spatula in the process :S Sigh, I never knew cookie dough could be so evil.

Seeing a broken spatula suddenly makes me think of wounds and pain – i don’t know why.. Everyone has different kinds of pain tolerance. For instance, think of a bleeding finger. Those afraid of pain would slap a plaster around it and wait patiently for the wound to dry up and heal. I on the other hand have no patience. Countless times I have offered the bf Double Prawn Herbal Oil when he gets wounds – he screams and runs the opposite direction.It will be SUPER painful for a couple of seconds, but the wound will dry up very quickly, then you will be free to go on doing whatever you wanted to do without being scared of wetting the wound or having the constant annoying tiny bit of pain.

I think this explains a lot about people. Some prefer gradual, tiny bits of pain for a longer duration. I would rather have a quick one – suffer teruk teruk first, then be free from it afterwards. If I were a nurse, a lot of patients would suffer. But it does not make me a bad nurse, because i still have their best interest at heart =)